OPINION, Dr. Orrin Pilkey: Business-as-usual on coast can't continue

Saturday

The hurricane outbreak over the past two years, combined with the U.N. report issued days before the storm hit, should force us to face some long-obvious facts.

On Oct. 6, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a bombshell report arguing that within 30 years global warming will reach a critical point of widespread and often intolerable impact on the earth and its oceans. These impacts include changes in rainfall amounts, intensity of hurricanes, warming temperatures, large wildfires, desertification, and sea-level rise, all which already are beginning to happen. The result will surely be a massive migration of people from parched (some U.S. deserts) and storm-impacted lands (Atlantic and Gulf barrier islands) and drowned cities (Miami).

Three days after the report was issued, Hurricane Michael made landfall along the Florida Panhandle and followed its path of destruction into Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. This hurricane, one of the largest and most powerful in U.S. history, caused damage over a large region. Michael arrived only 14 months after Hurricane Harvey (August 2017) caused much damage in Houston and Hurricane Maria (September 2017) had devastated a large part of Puerto Rico. About a month before the UN report (September 2018), Hurricane Florence hit North and South Carolina, bringing record-breaking rain and devastating floods.

These four storms are likely evidence of a long-predicted storm intensifying effect of the warming ocean. The record-breaking rainfall in Hurricane Florence in North Carolina (30 inches) and Hurricane Harvey in Houston (60 inches) is also a long-expected outcome from a warming ocean. Warmer water energizes storms and causes more evaporation, making for a wetter storm.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has rushed into the zones of destruction to help with the recovery of destroyed communities. A problem is that the effect of FEMA’s activities is to replace buildings back in the same dangerous locations -- beachfront sites, for example -- where they were when they were destroyed and where they will almost certainly be destroyed again.

Hundreds of high-priced homes are for sale on North Carolina’s barrier islands. Many are critically dangerous in view of the likelihood of climate-change-impacted storms and sea-level rise. Elsewhere, some brand-new island developments are being planned, which may be characterized as madness in the context of the times.

After a long battle with environmentalists, developers for Captain Sam’s Spit, near Charleston, S.C., recently gained permission to build infrastructure for construction of 50 houses in a decidedly low and narrow site that is already affected by storms and sea-level rise. Further south, on narrow Sea Island Spit in Georgia, eight expensive houses, on lots priced up to $5.5 million, are about to be constructed. Both sand spits were not developed earlier because the hazards were obvious, so why build on them now?

The hurricane outbreak over the past two years, combined with the U.N. report issued days before the storm hit, should force us to face some long-obvious facts.

1. Today’s storms are heavily impacted by global climate change, making them more intense and with more rainfall. As global warming intensifies, its role in storm strengthening can be expected to increase.

2. In the past, storm recovery has amounted to urban renewal with bigger and “better” buildings replacing storm-damaged structures. We can no longer afford to simply rebuild destroyed buildings near the shorelines where they originally were. We must plan recovery that will reduce the potential for future damage from climate-change-impacted storms.

3. We must recognize that sea-level rise is going to force retreat from storm-tossed, retreating shorelines. Not replacing destroyed buildings could be a first step to the inevitable retreat from the rising sea.

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